Beats the heck outta me.
I don't particularly have any gender hang ups, I like having a mix of masculine and feminine traits in my life and in my loves, so I don't really care if some people jump to the conclusion that I'm female. It's not like I hide the fact I am male, I make plenty of references to myself in the masculine form. The people who complain about their own mistake tell a whole lot more about themselves than anything else. I think the ones who get the most upset are the ones who pursue anything that sounds vaguely female without regard to who the person is inside. Sometimes I can't help toying with those sorts of people because their own cluelessness is morbidly fascinating.
I will say that I think anyone who makes an absolute statement about gender (IE: all women do this because X, or all men do this because Z) is seriously whacked.
The reality is that while there are some guidelines as to what gender is, they're only very loosely followed. Just because 90% of women dress or look like this, or a large percentage of men like sports, does not mean that someone who shares a sex but not a gender trait is going against nature.
Society in general, be it modern western society or ancient ones, or almost any other in the world, loves to point out, and often times persecute those who are different. Gender cues are simply a more obvious difference.
There are some very good arguments to support biological origins for gender. There's also some really good arguments to support that upbringing and conditioning have far more influence than any background biological impulse. Chaos Theory tends to explain some of this. It's probable that biological drive will tend to color what the aggregate does, it's foolish to say that the individual is biologically motivated.
"Gender Shock" by Phyllis Burke is a good read for some in depth analysis on gender, but be warned it's not a scientific text. Look at it more as a series of essays on the particular author's views (this applies to almost any pop culture/psychology/pseudoscience book out). Despite this, her analysis is pretty good.
Well, for one, I stopped really caring what gender a person is. Mind you, this is not to say that I don't *notice*. I certainly do notice, and there are gender traits I like or dislike very much. But what has changed in my life is how I deal with someone with regard to their gender. I've noticed I've lost much of the stereotypes associated with gender, and it grates on me to hear someone say "you do that because you're a man" or "of course she does that, she's a woman." Especially when it comes to relationships. In my relationships with both men and women I've noticed far more difference in the individual than in what sex they are.
To hear that makes the speaker sound pretty naive and somewhat ignorant. And I think it makes me cringe the most because I can identify with when I used to think like that.
I do think a statement like "men tend to like sports" or "women tend to like soft things" is a perfectly fine thing to say. As a generalization it is useful because it does accurately describe that behavior. What it is not fine to say is "you're a man, you should like sports" because the logical leap from describing a group behavior to applying that description of a behavior to an individual is very poor logic.
For me personally? I'm very masculine. I also have some feminine traits. I think they complement each other well. Conceptually I've been described as steel covered in velvet. I like that imagery and I think it's an apt description of me. I like the concept of feline grace and power, and it's one I try to embody in what I do and how I live.
I tend to be attracted to more feminine traits with a little masculinity thrown in as a good complement. That's my opposite. The sex of the person is irrelevant for a couple reasons, because my primary attraction is to who someone is rather than the gender traits the exhibit, and because sex is only a very crude indicator of gender.